Murder in a Small
Town

Winner

Denver Women's Press
Club

Nonfiction
Award

On January 18th, 1996,
Raymond Cain was sentenced to life in prison for the murder
of Sadie Frost. Cain was one day shy of his 18th birthday.

Ray murdered Sadie Frost
in cold blood. A .22 caliber bullet shattered her skull and
ripped through her brain. What Ray did to Sadie's friend
Shawnda was worse. He pumped two bullets into Shawnda's head
next, but somehow didn't manage to kill her.

Shawnda was discovered
sitting in the front seat of a white Toyota Tercel, the
passenger door hanging open, next to Sadie Frost's cold and
lifeless body. The temperature that night was below
freezing. Ironically, the freezing cold is probably what
saved Shawnda's life. What's left of it, that is.

Gang-style
murder-robberies were supposed to be something that happened
in L.A. Not in Colorado ski towns.

I was in the courtroom
during closing arguments.

The defendent was led
in. With a haircut and a clean shirt, Raymond Cain looked
like a schoolkid.

I'm sure in grunge
clothing, beer in one hand, Smith&Wesson in the other,
Ray was as mean a gang-banger as Durango had ever seen.
Defense counsel objected when District Attorney Greg Lyman
referred to the accused as a "Predator." Today Ray was a 17
year old baby-faced kid on trial for murder.

"What's the matter
here!" I wanted to scream.

Ray's accomplice Gabe
Rivera, had already been convicted. He refused to testify
against Ray, thereby adding 6 months jail time for contempt
of court onto what was already a life sentence. Gabe had
been convicted of felony murder, that is, the participation
in a crime, any crime, in which a murder takes place.

There is a six part
defense for felony murder. Basically, you must have not
known a murder was likely to occur, you must have disengaged
yourself from the crime upon learning another participant
was armed with a deadly weapon, and have not aided,
importuned or requested commission of the homicidal act. If
one tine on the six-pronged fork is missing, you're guilty.
Gabe was missing several tines. Ray was missing the whole
set. All the evidence indicated he was the shooter.

"What went wrong," I
wondered, not with Ray, but with his family, his friends,
his teachers, his neighbors, his church, his community,
hell, with all of Durango. I wanted to know how a 17 year
old kid can decide to murder a pair of Indian women in order
to rob them of a measly $3000, tribal money they had
received on their 18th birthdays.

Did Ray think he'd get
away with it because he was careful not to leave any
fingerprints, like he had on his previous crimes? Who or
what tells someone like Ray that "getting away" with a
crime, being "clever" enough not to get caught, somehow
makes it OK?

Who was to blame?

It takes an entire
community to raise a child. Well, who the hell raised Ray?
Who had been Ray's examples and role models in life? Was
Ray's family to blame? The Cains weren't exactly pillars of
the community. Where was the older kid up the street who
might have invited Ray up to a fraternity party at CU,
thereby instilling in him a desire to finish high school and
go to college instead of roaming the streets of Durango at
night in search of alcohol and methamphetamine. Where was
the lone teacher who had somehow reached Ray, and inspired
in him a love of chemistry or some other subject? Where was
the grandfather who might have taught Ray the joy of fixing
old cars or fly fishing. Were there no brothers, or cousins,
or uncles watching out for him?

What happened to the
"Thou shalt nots" drilled into most of us in Sunday school?
Had drugs silenced Ray's conscience forever? It appeared the
only thing Ray enjoyed, or knew how to do in life wasto
bring hell into the lives of everyone who came in contact
with him.

Perhaps Ray alone was to
blame. Wasn't pleading innocent proof Ray was never going to
take responsibility for his actions? He'd been on the
highway to hell for several years, a downward spiral of ever
more violent and serious crimes. His squeezing of the
trigger three or four times in quick succession had brutally
rebuffed everyone in the community who had ever tried to
guide him back to a straighter or narrower path.

Ray had now used up all
his second chances.

Slouched down in his
chair, Ray looked limp, impotent. The high ceilinged
courtroom was quiet. I glanced at the jury box, wondering
what sort of folk would seal his fate. Were the people who
were going to sit there ordinary and decent? Did they have
the moral courage to convict someone of first degree murder,
especially someone this young and innocent looking?

Ray sat a table marked
"Defendant," directly behind him sat the Courthouse Deputy
who had led him in. Greg Lyman, the La Plata County District
Attorney, all six foot two of him, sat at an adjacent table
fidgeting with his hands, doing spider pushups, until
Guillermo Garibay, one of Ray's court appointed lawyerss
walked up to ask some minor question about moving a
flipchart board both sides were sharing. The Deputy leaned
back against the oak wall as if to nap. The judge poked his
head in, and asked Counsel to meet him in chambers.

The courtroom had
benches harder and straighter than any church pews I'd ever
sat in. In the first row sat the Durango Herald's reporter.
Behind her, the families of the victims, relatives, Shawnda
Baker and her family. Shawnda would never be able to recall
much of that fateful evening, other than "falling asleep,"
her family's euphemism for the "event." Behind them were the
grandparents of one of the witnesses who had come to watch
their grandchild testify, and stayed on. This case had made
watching People's Court boring.

In the extreme
rear of the room sat Investigators Ezzell and Owens, Ezzel
from the Sherriff's office, Owens from the DA's. They
weren't jovial, but neither were they as somber as the rest
of the occupants of the room. Their investigations and
evidence had given the DA a solid case. Settling over the
courtroom was a silence, a calm before the storm of closing
arguments.

.

.

Ray sat alone, unshackled.
He could have bolted for the door and beat the deputy by a
half-step or more. Why didn't he try? By now he had to know
he was going to prison. His public defender hadn't put up
much of a defense, no elaborate alibi or alternate
explanation of that night's events, however implausable. The
courtroom was on the second floor. Ray could have crashed
out one of the courtroom windows, and landed in the bushes
below, perhaps without breaking a leg. If Booth could do it,
Ray could. It was definitely worth a try. I would
have.

Cain sat there, replaying
that night's events like a bad car crash. He hadn't been as
clever as he'd thought. He'd gotten caught and now he was
going to go to prison. The investigators hadn't figured out
exactly the way everything had gone down, but they'd figured
out enough. "If I had onlys" were running through his mind.

Silence. Hushed banter from
the rear of the courtroom. Someone tearing apart Velcro.
Over and over. Frank Cain, Ray's father, who had
unsuccessfully run for sheriff of the neighboring county the
year before mustered a little cough. Knuckles were cracked.
People shifted in those impossibly rock-hard pews. A yawn.
The deputy blinked and tried to figure out how he got
assigned courtroom duty, and how he might avoid it in the
future. More yawns. The reporter jiggled her feet. The sun
began to shine through the 12 foot windows, each topped with
an oak mantle and a Realistic PA speaker that must have been
there since the '60s.

I took a moment to pray for
Ray Cain. A guilty verdict on a charge of murder would mean
society had decided, once and for all, he was beyond
redemption. There's no coming back from a murder conviction.
To survive in prison, he'd either have to get even more
violent or he'd become someone's punk. He wasn't very big,
physically.

The .22 shell casings
disappeared from the physical evidence sometime after the
Colorado Bureau of Investigations examined them. The defense
had had their opportunity to examine them. Who knows, maybe
they somehow caused them to dissapear. But a .22 revolver
was supposedly used to commit the crime, and a revolver
doesn't eject its spent casings until it's reloaded. Cain
had only fired four shots, meaning no reload was necessary.
One c casing was found under several weeks worth of snow,
fifteen feet away from the Tercel, the other found near the
driver's door. The casings found might or might not have
been from the murder weapon, especially given the fact it
was a revolver. It didn't look good that two casings were
found at the scene where, at least in theory, there should
have been none. And then lost.

According to Lyman, to
obtain a murder conviction you need a murder weapon,
evidence, a suspect, a witness, and a motive. Fail to
produce any one of the five not so easy pieces and it
becomes a lot harder to convince a jury. Especially if the
charge is murder in the first degree.

There was a second gun
mentioned, a .22 revolver kept in Gabe Rivera's father's
pickup truck. Gabe supposedly wouldn't have had access to
that. I didn't buy that. Gabe could have made copies of his
father's keys anytime he'd used the truck.. To this day I
wonder if that wasn't the murder weapon, although the
ballistics tests on it and the bullets recovered from Sadie
and Shawnda were inconclusive.

The biggest piece of
bullshit offered by the defense was the $1000 cash one of
Ray's uncles claims to have mailed him two days before the
murder took place, thereby explaining Ray being out buying a
$700 stereo the day after the murder/robbery. A surprise
witness, this uncle had flown in from NY in the middle of
the trial and "sprung" this piece of information on the
court. No one bought it. Jury members rolled their eyes
during the uncle's testimony.

Springing "surprise"
witnesses into a criminal trial just isn't done. For
starters, it's grounds for declaring a mistrial. All
prospective witnesses are identified, interviewed,
depositions taken and so forth before a trial begins. By
both sides. A surprise witness brought in at the last moment
is a desparation move which often does more harm than good,
even though it temporarily throws the other side off
balance. Garibay perhaps thought it might work here. He
certainly didn't have much else to work with.

The day dragged on, with
the jury dismissed first until 10:30, then 1 PM as both
sides haggled over the dozens of pages of jury instructions,
one entire set for each of the charges filed against Ray.
They included first degree murder, conspiracy to commit
first degree murder, attempted first degree murder, felony
murder, conspiracy to commit armed robbery, and several
lesser charges. Greg Lyman had thrown the book at Raymond
Cain.

The jury was brought in at
1:05 and the judge began reading the painfully long
instructions. Phrases like "did kill, maim or wound" and,
"intention after deliberation" and "in the State of Colorado
at or about the place charged, did commit murder" echoed
again and again through the courtroom as the jury was read a
full set of instructions for each and every charge. Monotony
reigned. Jury instructions would prove to be critical years
later, when one of Cain's co-conspirators would be granted a
re-trial based on a claim of incomplete jury instructions
having been read. Today, however, the task was staying
awake.

Suddenly it became real, as
if I had awoken from a daydream. This was a murder trial.
Ray Cain was going to be found guilty or innocent in a few
short hours. His life hung in the balance.

I sat behind Ray Cain's
parents, and waited for him to look back as the judge droned
on and on, reading the instructions. "Knowingly," "With
Intent" "Beyond a reasonable doubt." What exactly do you see
in the eyes of a murderer, I wondered.

He wasn't going to look
back. I began to zone out again.

"Beyond a reasonable
doubt." Those words caught my mind and snapped me to the
present. What powerful words. Not "In all likelihood," or
any other, lesser words. But "Beyond a reasonable doubt."
The cornerstone of the American justice system rests on
those four words: "Beyond a reasonable doubt." BARD. Those
words ensure almost no one goes to prison who isn't 100%,
certifiably, guilty. It's the hallmark of the American
juidicial system.

Even a "reasonable" doubt
is sufficient to let someone go free. Someone "Who in all
probability" committed a crime. Like O.J. Simpson.

"The burden of proof falls
on the prosecution. If you, the members of the jury are not
convinced BARD then you MUST find the defendant innocent."

Did a reasonable doubt
remain? Hadn't a preponderance of evidence and testimony
shown that Ray Cain, was in fact, the shooter? In my mind,
Ray's public defender had failed to cast even the dimmest
glimmer of the shadow of a doubt necessary to get Ray off.

Greg Lyman, DA, began
his closing arguments: "January 21 1995 was judgment day for
Sadie Frost and Shawnda Lynne Baker. Today is judgment day
for Raymond Cain. The evidence is clear... I am asking you,
the members of this jury, to harden your hearts against
Raymond Cain, who sits before you today."

The jury deliberated for
four and a half hours, then spoke. "We, the jury,
unanimously find Raymond Cain guilty of felony
murder."